A limited constitutional government calls for a rules-based, freemarket monetary system, not the topsy-turvy fiat dollar that now exists under central banking. This issue of the Cato Journal examines the case for alternatives to central banking and the reforms needed to move toward free-market money.

The more widespread use of body cameras will make it easier for the American public to better understand how police officers do their jobs and under what circumstances they feel that it is necessary to resort to deadly force.

Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it? In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects.

The Cato Institute has released its 2014 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. “Libertarianism is not just a framework for utopia,” Cato’s David Boaz writes in his book, The Libertarian Mind. “It is the indispensable framework for the future.” And as the new report demonstrates, the Cato Institute, thanks largely to the generosity of our Sponsors, is leading the charge to apply this framework across the policy spectrum.

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New Paper on the Generalized System of Preferences

I have a new paper out today on the Generalized System of Preferences, the program by which the U.S. government allows certain imports from most developing countries to enter the U.S. market duty-free. The program has benefits: some producers in some poor countries are able to sell more than they otherwise would in the U.S. market, and U.S. consumers benefit to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year because of the tariff exemptions.

But the GSP still represents managed trade, and poorly managed at that. The program is designed so certain goods in which poorer countries tend to have a comparative advantage – textiles, for example – are excluded from the program, mainly because of the influence of the U.S. textile lobby. There are limits on how much of a particular product a beneficiary country can export duty-free, which means that truly efficient and competitve exporters are shut out. The very existence of the program has proved a stumbling block to (superior, if not first-best) multilateral trade liberalization, because GSP beneficiary countries don’t want reductions in general tariffs to erode their preferential access.

With the GSP expiring at the end of the year (more here on possible vehicles for its passage [$]), it is a good time for Congress to consider radically changing this program. The best way to secure an open, prosperous world economy is to allow trade to flow freely across borders. If that is a bridge too far for politicians, they should at least consider some of the other reforms I suggest to make the GSP more open to more products, and to reduce the interference these programs impose on voluntary, peaceful exchange. Opening the U.S. market on a permanent and non-discriminatory basis should be the ultimate goal.